This was not quite what I was expecting. I think I was expecting something more along the lines of Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, because people have compared them endlessly, but aside from taking inspiration from Russian folklore, the two books don’t have very much in common. Uprooted is a fairytale, albeit one that is lengthened and deepened. The Bear and the Nightingale is a historical fantasy that is historical fiction first, fantasy second. This book takes place in medieval Russia, then called Rus’. The daughter of […]
Go for the throat.
I was in just exactly the right mood for this. And this was just exactly the right balance of satire, genuine laugh out loud humor, and sneaky pathos that I prefer in my Discworld books. But, hey, is this really the last of the Witches books? Are they in the Tiffany Aching ones? I’m gonna miss these ladies. (Even Magrat. And hey, she’s not too bad now that she’s a mother. Much more forceful, and less of a limp dishrag.) Firstly, this is a clever […]
Generic, derivative YA fantasy in disguise.
Two things: 1. I wanted to like this. 2. I did not like this. I will elaborate. (NB: I waited a couple of weeks to actually sit down and write this review, because I was so aggravated while reading I was afraid my review would come out more scathing than the book deserved. I’m glad I waited. Rant reviews are fun on occasion, but I prefer to be more level-headed for the most part.) I wanted to like this because: There are not enough diverse […]
Fractured Fairytale
I finished my last book while I was on vacation and didn’t have anything else on deck so a skimmed through the offerings on Kindle Prime and stumbled across this fun little book. It was a great vacation read. It is about Ella Hannaford, a very serious young women who is an eco-architect. Her mom died when she was young and now her very loving, but hard drinking, dad is getting remarried to a woman who is very… passionate about how she wants things to […]
An Anatomy of Drew Hayes, but also review of Going Rogue
There are 3 kinds of Drew Hayes books: a) the novels that as complete books are 600+ pages long, have short chapters, and are fairly episodic (ie Super Powereds), b) the novels that are structured more like novels with chapter longer than 1-2 pages and not epic in length (Spells, Swords, & Stealth), and c) the novels that are average in length (under 300 pages) and set up like a series of short stories (Fred the Vampire Accountant). While some of the distinctions come from […]
Red Sister? Like a baby Red Sonja?
I’ll admit, even with the strong recommendations I was getting for this book, I did have some trepidation picking up Red Sister. The only other work of Mark Lawrence that I’ve read previously was Prince of Thorns, which I had a lot of difficulties getting into. The problem wasn’t so much with Lawrence’s prose, which I quite liked, or his world-building, but with his protagonist. While the story of an irredeemable psychopath does have the potential to be interesting, I found myself driven to apathy […]
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